The other 9/11 families

found errors in here.  Needs editing, mostly copy–leaving it up because it’s important to me, and Duke Dawg Doug already commented, and he has the best blog roll in the blogging world.  Waking Ambrose–which I have under Bitter Bierce.  If you’re going to steal friends, steal them from Doug. I always do!  But I share.  And now feel too sick to change anything!

Think the voting for the Koufax might begin soon.  Everybody who reads Courting knows that I love lurkers–just vote for me and BIO.  And if you do or have commented will answer tomorrow

I have written extensively for both Courting and BIO on how 9/11 changed my world.  The next month my mom fell and died. 

Call October, 2001 the month New York ran out of empathy.  When I would try to tell somebody about my mom, I would be told:

 “Had two nephews who died at the Trade Center.”

 “It’s been six days.  Snap out of it.  Think of the younger people.”

To keep myself sane I have been staying away from 9/11 related issues right now.  I am talked out.  I tried finding support groups for people such as myself; unless we lived or worked downtown or knew somebody who died in the attacks, we weren’t eligible for free counseling. 

You know this really is a subject that time heals. Only it doesn’t because people always bring it up.  We spent years having to decide if a color alert was real or not.  Laugh at it, come on, you know they’re never real. So I should know.

And when I would get the free subway rides because the police were looking for certain people I should just laugh that off; as I should laugh off my best friend working in a building considered to be a prime target.

Survival calls for coping and defense mechanisms.  One such mechanism is not to think about 9/11 consciously because it permeates every damn area of my life.  Know too many kids in therapy because they were just old enough to understand.

I have said this before and will say it again though it makes me seem cold and horrible.  The 9/11 families, I can’t imagine what they went through.  But they didn’t have to pay estate taxes, were given counseling and free vacations. and much money.

The rest of us had to file our own taxes among everything else.  Had my mom died two and a half months later, we would have had to pay much less in estate taxes.  Had she died last year, zilch.  But we had to pay, and every week when I would go to to the bank to have something done I would bring everything the people had told me too, the web site said.  But you know, it was never frigging enough. 

Yes 9/11 changed every aspect of my life.  My mom died.  She wasn’t sick; just blind.  I have tried so hard and so long to get over it, and usually I’m fine with it now.  Here’s where I’m supposed to say but I love paying  taxes, I’m a liberal.

Get over it. New York’s a triple taxed state.  Some years I pay more to the state than I do to the feds, so that kids upstate can get a decent education.  The money doesn’t come back here.  The year my mom died, an estate was taxable at $675,000, sounds a lot?  Not if you own a home.

And right, a man yesterday was found to have anthrax poisoning.  My mail was sparodicly delivered for months because of anthrax.  Yet I was supposed to pay the bills whether I received them or not. Oh pay them on the Internet?  That assumes that I had Internet service.  Sparodic also–that was a building or cable problem but they didn’t find the cause for a long time.

Got a deep throat call one day:

 “Hi, just want to tell you that you weren’t crazy.  Your building had a low signal problem.”

People from the cable company were over so much; well the words “problematic,”  and “constant complainer” were often said.  Just when I needed my apartment the most, it was overrun with people from the cable company, people fixing leaks that seemed to happen too often that year, people plastering, people painting.  I wanted my mommy; I got contractors.  Fair exchange.

But sometimes…everything comes cascading down into my head.  I wasn’t worthy enough to be given help.  My mom was just an old lady who lived in the Queens/Nassau border; I live on the Upper West Side

Do you know how hard it is to live in a city that failed you when you needed it most?  I only kept five of my friends.  The rest…well, how dare I mourn my own mother.

So yes I fell out of love with New York. Any place will be better.  But my family has lived here for over a hundred years.  My parents were both born in Manhattan.  It is our city and I do love it.

I have more than earned the right to bitch about New York without mentioning 9/11.   And I understand how hard it was for everybody. I understand that everybody was totally screwed up.  That didn’t give them the right to rip into me.

I don’t want to turn into a bitter horrible person.  I was always a fun person.  9/11 took that from me.  It almost destroyed me because my 9/11 wasn’t the regular 9/11.  I have worked my way back up to some kind of normal

I have been writing light on purpose lately.  It helps me.  And excuse me for being selfish but I like to feel good.  I don’t like to dwell on my problems

Actually that’s not true.  The post, below the bloggers wall one talks about something that affected my life for many years.  Can’t help it if I write funny titles sometimes. Kind of love the phrase “dental bulimic” because it so perfectly explains. It has taken me so many years to be able to talk about that problem.  Writing about it on my blog has helped me immensely.  I hope that it’s helped other people. 

I believe that social issues are politics, and politics are social issues.  That’s my bias.  Had a dental appointment the month before 9/11.  Guess what day I had picked to make new ones?  Yes, really.  The first Tuesday after Labor Day week; always seemed like a good day to truly begin the new year, and I have always thought in terms of school years.

 And then my mom died, and it took me two more years to get up the nerve to face that problem

I will say one more thing.  9/11 showed the extent this administration hates New York.  Took us three years to get the money we were supposed to get.  Maybe there would have been money for pilot programs for people who lost family members around the time of 9/11 but not in the Trade Center.

Montana didn’t need that money.  We did.  And do.  My fixed expenses have gone up 60% in the past four years. Has my income?  Ha.  What seemed more than enough eight years ago when I moved to this apartment, an  apartment I was considered “financially over qualified for” seems not nearly enough now. 

But I was prudent and bought an apartment that I could afford and didn’t have to sell my soul for a mortgage.  But this city, it eats your money.  Don’t know how there are so many rich people who can so easily afford everything.

Don’t worry Cooper, I’m not going to have to move in with you ;-) 

Just please don’t make me a 9/11 poster child, or frame everything that happens in New York around it.  It changed our lives in ways that you can’t imagine. Only people from New Orleans have had it worse–much worse.

But in order to survive we have to not thing about it.  You know, the fabled Brits during the blitz. Only our next attack migh come tomorrow or might never come or it might come in one subway or it might….so sick of it.

I have been trying to reclaim my life; at times I do an incredible job of it.  It’s been four and a half years next month.  I will not live a 9/11 centered life because it satisfies other people in other cities needs.  Please let me finish my recovery my way.

Let a person who lived through it mention it first.  My next door neighbor–she bought and sold three apartments before finally settling here.  The people down the street–never walked into their downtown apartment again.

I know many 9/11 stories. I tell them when I want to.  That is my right, as a New Yorker, a person and a blogger

I will carry 9/11 and 10/13 when my mom fell, in my heart always, it’s a part of me.  It’s in the air I breath, the people I sit next to in the subway and at Starbucks.

Recently wrote about an exhibit at a specialized high school.  Went with some friends, on  a retired k-9 cop who came to the Trade Center later that day, it was where he worked.  The sadness in his eyes after he looked at some 9/11 themed paintings by kids who had just entered middle school when 9/11 happened; it was overwhelming to see his pain compounded by his pain for the kids.

Do you get it?  We can’t think about 9/11 constantly.  We wouldn’t live. 

It’s my right to talk about New York without the backdrop of 9/11.  It’s my right to just be another person who happens to live in a city that lost its grit before 9/11.  So when I talk about that I’m talking about things that were happening before.

Times Square wasn’t magically cleaned up right after 9/11 no matter what that nice radical right lady said about me: “liberals are so mean.,” because I told her that and that if you don’t report a bag on the street without an owner you’re risking your own life and every person arounds life.  So yes life has dramatically changed.  We report bags without thinking.  We accept many things we didn’t before

But don’t ever take my First or Fourth Amendments rights away because then I get truly crazed.  And nobody wants that